And today the man is talking about 100 percent tarrifs on red wine which will simply increase the war in another direction. Funny but I always though capitalism was about letting the market do its job.

Count me as one saying recession since 2018, I MAY have mentioned my thoughts here or I may have just been thinking them.

More ads on TV touting debt relief, more people obviously in debt over there heads...again.
The financial people I see/listen to have been saying it, granted they don't put a time limit on their predictions but most everyone says this level of "growth" is not sustainable.

Maybe too simplistic but I always wonder...just because things are being made, do we really need them? Plastic cheap goods, that are "one shot deals" , overly expensive vehicles that most people cannot afford and IF they buy them cannot afford to go anywhere in them.
Technology that while very useful is taking us away from community, lack of community breeds distrust and isolationism, fear and trickle down hate and sometimes racism.
All of this is just my opinion.
I believe that while we have all of these financial pundits to see and listen to, we would be better served to look and listen for ourselves.

again...jut MHO
JCKitty

I agree about all this plastic junk and other things that people blindly go looking for every single day

I haven't been in a walmart in months. I remember the first time i saw how all that junk was just junk. We were in Las Cruces new mexico and going to "old town". Nothing but stores selling things made in China. Ever since then i wonder why people go to these places. And Disneyland - why. But then i will admit, i was never a fan of theme parks.

And cars. You see people around here driving cars that are worth more than their little simple homes. I don't understand that either.

And today the man is talking about 100 percent tarrifs on red wine which will simply increase the war in another direction. Funny but I always though capitalism was about letting the market do its job.

He's been talking about that for a while ... is that in retaliation for French tariffs, or is this something else? BTW, interesting story in the LA Times today about the tariff's effects on a Cali winery owner exports to China.

As for a recession: This brings to mind an old joke about economic predictions: If you laid all the world's economists end to end, they'd still point in different directions.
Will we see a recession in the near future? Maybe not, but it's possible ... at one time the U.S. could swing a big economic stick and the world would fall in line. But it's not 1946, folks ...

Globialization isn't going away. We may not like how China plays the game, but the U.S. needs the huge market it represents. If tariffs make our goods too expensive, well, there are other countries to buy from. (Russia and Brazil pop up in the stories about agricultural tariff issues. And the European Commission reports that the EU is China's biggest trading partner. How that changes with a Brexit remains to be seen.)

Does it hurt China on exports? To a point, but again, the U.S. isn't the only trading partner out there.

On the whole, things look rosy here. (And yep, people are certainly spending $$$.) But the 3.7% unemployment rate doesn't necessarily reflect that many jobs are temp, or gig, or contract or part-time, or near minimum-wage. (As you've mentioned, Barb, and we know about that in my house, too.) This month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 4 million people are classified as involuntary part-time workers.
Those figures also show that some 1.5 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force (wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months). Of these, 368,000 are discouraged workers who have given up because they believe no jobs are available for them. (How many of those have retired/filed for disability/are over age 50, I wonder? )

This is my long-winded way of saying that we well could pay a high cost for our current policies. That's going to run headlong into our current economic pressures (and we haven't seen the full shift into technology). It's going to be a bumpy ride ... but how bumpy depends on what happens in the next few years.

I suggest we all keep doing what we've been doing. Stay vilgilant, keep spending under control, stay out of debt and arrange your investments to withstand a drop.

Last edited by LWolfT on Sun Aug 18, 2019 1:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

And cars. You see people around here driving cars that are worth more than their little simple homes. I don't understand that either.

Shopped for a new car lately? Believe me, the prices are eye-watering. Read that the average price paid for a new car is close to $37K. (No way in h ...!) Even used cars can be pricey ... saw a 16-year-old car listed for $7K. Er, no. It may have had low mileage, but it's still 16 years old.

That said, I think a lot of folks are leasing. Either that, or they're paying on those 72- and 84-month car loans I've read about.

Shopped for a new car lately? Believe me, the prices are eye-watering. Read that the average price paid for a new car is close to $37K. (No way in h ...!) Even used cars can be pricey ... saw a 16-year-old car listed for $7K. Er, no. It may have had low mileage, but it's still 16 years old.

That said, I think a lot of folks are leasing. Either that, or they're paying on those 72- and 84-month car loans I've read about.